A Memory To Use
by Mindy35
Summary: What if Elliot's goodbye note meant something else entirely?


Rating: M, sexy stuff

Disclaimer: Not mine, you know whose

Spoilers: Nup, doing my own thing at this point

Pairing: Elliot/Olivia

Summary: What if Elliot's goodbye note meant something else entirely?

A/N1: This story, like many of mine, jumps around in time, taking place over a ten-year period from season 8 (2006) to season 13 (2011) to the current season (2016). As I am no longer watching the show though, my season 18 Olivia probably has more in common with her previous incarnation than her current one. Also, I haven't inserted dates, so please let me know if it needs them. Also, this story assumes (like most EO shippers do) that the deleted scene in which Elliot contacts Olivia after his departure is canon.  
A/N2: Yes, I am a cliché, I am using Adele lyrics at the top of this fic. Gimme a break, I only put a stanza when I could've quoted the whole darn song. Written by Adele Laurie Adkins, Bruno Mars, Christopher Brown, Philip Lawrence and used without permission.  
A/N3: I also mention the author Graham Greene, who wrote _The Third Man_ , _The End of the Affair_ and _Brighton Rock_ , amongst other novels, many of which deal with Catholicism, extra-marital love, convert intelligence and notions of justice.  
A/N4: This one goes out to linrollins, who asked for more (more than once! ;) ).  
A/N5: Finally, please feed the box. Thank you and enjoy!

* * *

-x-

… _Don't get me wrong, I know  
There is no tomorrow  
All I ask is, if  
This is my last night with you  
Hold me like I'm more than just a friend  
Give me a memory I can use  
Take me by the hand while we do what lovers do  
It matters how this ends  
'Cause what if I never love again?..._

-x-

She doesn't go in.

She won't go in.

She doesn't need to. At least, she tries to convince herself she doesn't. Just like she tried to convince herself not to come today. Just like she tried to convince herself not to come five years ago.

It did no good. They were a foregone conclusion. Always had been. She knew it looking at that note, at those three short words. For perhaps the first time in her life, Olivia fully understood the conclusion she had so futilely attempted to deny for over thirteen years of partnership. It was those thirteen years of intimacy and insight that enabled her to deduce exactly what her partner's to-anybody-else ambiguous message meant.

 _Semper Fi._

 _El._

It could possess myriad meanings. But she knew the one he intended. One screamed louder and clearer than all the rest, pointing her in the direction of a conversation – a short, unremarkable, even mundane exchange – conducted so many years before, but now providing them with a potent and palpable lifeline back to another time. Back to each other.

-x-

Elliot sat with a sigh, adjusting his long coat about him. He glanced about with an assessing eye, taking in the faded upholstery and antiquated reprints. Olivia smiled, easing into the armchair opposite, the one that gave her a nice oblique view of the entryway.

"You like this place," she commented, voice low and wry.

Her partner shrugged, turning his gaze on her. "What's wrong with it?"

"It's a dump," she muttered, shifting on the lumpy cushion and sniffing in the dusty air.

"It's…" Elliot sank further back in his chair, propped one ankle on one knee, "cosy."

"It's clean," she admitted grudgingly, "that's about all that can be said for it."

"Well, in this neighborhood, that's a lot."

"Hm. Maybe…"

He lunged forward, peering around his chair's wide wings at the door. "Besides, this guy's a disgraced vet. I doubt he can afford any better."

"Let's just hope he's a _punctual_ , disgraced vet."

She cast a hand over to the side-table by her chair, sifting through a collection of magazines that looked like they had been lying undisturbed for more than half a century. The place reminded her of that shadowy post-war period, of the kind of joint that angst-ridden characters from a Graham Greene novel would slink into when conducting a long-term extra-marital affair. She'd enjoyed a secret fetish for such tales in her late teens, despite her mother's disapproval of such low-brow literature. Glancing across at her partner, Olivia considered sharing this little insight into her thoughts and her past. But she could already anticipate the blank look with which Elliot would respond so she remained silent. She flipped the pages of her yellowing magazine for a few minutes before changing her mind, lifting her head and flicking the falling bangs from her eyes. Stakeouts tended to have that effect on her. On both of them, really. The stretches of empty waiting reduced their filters, lowered their inhibitions and left space for insights to be shared that ordinarily wouldn't be.

Elliot responded to this particular insight with the blank look she expected, making her chuckle. Then he glanced lazily at the globe, eagle and anchor crest that hung above the head of the one-armed owner-manager. "I dunno who the hell Graham Greene is, Liv, but I'll tell you what – if I ever go to ground, this is where you'll find me. A place like this."

She raised her brows, a smile twitching the corners of her mouth. "Here?"

Elliot nodded, taking another look around. "Yeah. Here. Or…somewhere like it."

Olivia snorted and went back to half perusing her magazine and half watching the door. "O-kay…well. Good to know."

Twenty minutes later, their reclusive witness showed and half-heartedly agreed to accompany them to the station to give a statement. As they were escorting him out the door of the Semper Fi Arms though, Elliot doubled back. Olivia waited on the boardwalk, watched through the dim vestibule as her partner thanked the owner-manager, a veteran Marine himself, and shook the one hand the old man still had left.

-x-

She sits on the beach, the wind in her hair and her toes in the sand. It's not a pretty day. The ocean churns bitterly. The wind periodically whips sand at her. The temperature is dropping and the tide advancing, urging her to move on. She closes her eyes, stays where she is, tells her herself she doesn't need to go in. Proximity to the Semper Fi Arms is enough to awaken her memories, give her a faint fix of him – of them. She will simply sit outside the old place on the cold and gusty beach until the sun goes down and the tide forces her to evacuate. Then she will gather herself and her memories and head home to a solitary bottle of red.

That's the plan.

She doesn't need to go in. She won't.

The memory is enough. It has to be now.

-x-

She arrived first, his note in her pocket. As if those two words – _Semper Fi_ – constituted specific instructions and detailed directions. Not that she needed any. She had a good head for places and names, Elliot knew that. Having visited somewhere once, she rarely forgot it. Of course, it had been five years. Five years since their conversation in the vestibule of the Semper Fi Arms and five months more since she gazed at him across the squadroom floor, knowing that pumping a bullet into the body of a distraught teenage girl would impact him, would impact them both. Olivia just didn't know how deeply. She didn't know – as she always thought she would – that that fatal shot would also spell their end.

The place was virtually the same. Some new carpet but the same wooden crest above the check-in desk, the same one-armed man sitting patiently below it. The same pair of wing-backed chairs stood in the dusty vestibule, on the same faded rug with the same collection of magazines piled between them on a rickety little side-table. They hadn't ventured upstairs last time. They'd just picked up their witness then got on with the case. But she wasn't surprised to find that the upstairs of the cramped little hotel was much like the downstairs. Aged but comfortable, verging on comforting.

The key stuck in the lock a little and the room's interior smelt slightly stale. Striding to the window, she shoved it open, let the sea air wash in then leaned a little way out. It was a beautiful day. Not that they'd be seeing any of it. They wouldn't be swimming in the welcoming sea or baking under the magnanimous sun or turning their faces into the gentle breeze as sticky gelato dripped down their fingers. Their entire day would be spent within four, dingy walls. In a musty little room that seemed permanently suspended in the 1950s. The prospect was glorious to her, yet painful in its obvious limitation.

She stayed for several minutes at the window, one hip propped on the sill. She took the time to consciously memorize the view – the children splashing in the ocean, the elderly couples strolling down the boardwalk. The ice-cream vendors and dogs on leashes and teens on skateboards. She only turned away from the sights and sounds of the leisurely beaching masses with the skit of a key in the lock and the swish of the door sliding open against the plush new carpeting. She faced the dark little corridor that hid the door, the bathroom, the closet. She could barely see him at first, standing in the sunlight, her eyes still adjusting from the day's brightness. He was just a shadow, much like he'd been for the past five months. A haunting presence that accompanied her everywhere but disappeared whenever she turned to face him, speak to him, reach out to him.

Olivia narrowed her eyes and stepped closer. She wanted him to look different – to have grey hair or a beard, to have a new tattoo or fresh wrinkles, to have lost weight, put on weight, anything. Anything to prove that those five months had passed. Anything to confirm that that incising gap had worn on him as much as it had on her. She wondered if it showed on her face, in her body, stance, expression. Did she look how he remembered? Did she look older, sadder, fatigued by his unconscionable abandonment? At least the drab interior of the hotel could serve her there, since she couldn't look nearly as drawn as her surroundings. She took another step forward, hoping she looked as he remembered. Because he looked exactly the same. Just as she remembered. Not a single bit different. Damn him. Even the way he turned his head and slung his bag to the ground was instantly recognizable to her eyes and insanely loved by her soul.

She cast a glance at the bag, eyebrows slightly raised. She hadn't brought a bag, hadn't even thought to. She hadn't for a moment considered the idea that they might spend more than the day together. One single day was the most she'd hoped for. Possibly because even a day to indulge in what they were clearly there to indulge in was much, much more than she had ever dared desire in all her years at his side. Absence had made them dare though. Separation had made them brave. They had progressed from staunch disavowal to brazen recklessness, migrating up stairs to a room with a bed. She glanced at it before turning her gaze back to his.

"Staying awhile?"

Elliot smiled mildly, a slight hitch in his voice as he replied, "Told you I liked this place."

-x-

The charm of the place grew on her, she had to admit. She grew to appreciate the new carpet for how it received their clothes. She grew fond of one particular wall for how the abrasive wallpaper felt against the skin of her back and the backs of her wrists when Elliot pinned her writhing body to its surface. She liked the old-fashioned prints, particularly the one that hung above the bed they shared, the one that fell to the floor when their mutual thrusting repeatedly hammered the headboard to the shuddering wall. It was the bed she liked most of all, as that was the place her partner finally pushed into her, the place she finally took him into her body then rolled them, looking down at him as they moved together with increasing passion and urgency. It was where they compulsively and frantically kissed, moaned, talked, touched, explored, embraced and came. And where they slept. Together. At last. Cooling skin pressed close and fingers drifting restlessly until palms curled around a favorite curve and stilled into peace. It was where noses sunk deeply into hair and scent and presence, filling up satisfied lungs with deep, sleeping breaths.

She didn't expect him to still be there the next morning. Despite the overnight bag he had brought, Olivia expected to wake alone in tangled sheets with only an ecstatic memory she couldn't quite trust. Maybe she was used to expecting little of him. Only what he could spare, once he had doled out his love in generous rations to his family. But when she rolled away from the window, hands investigating the warm, empty mattress, her half-open eyes fell on his bag, sitting on the floor where he'd dropped it the previous day. Her ears tuned in to the hiss of the shower, confirming her partner's continuing presence. Stretching her lax and used limbs under the plain white sheets, Olivia banished her memories to a time she would need them and dedicated her mind to creating a few more for future consumption and consolation. The bathroom door cracked and a puff of mist appeared, preceding Elliot's entry. She sat up, sheet pressed to her breasts and toes curling beneath the covers. He stood with his hands on his hips, wearing nothing but a loosely tucked towel and a fine sheen of moisture. His eyes slid deliberately over her then turned towards the window, the beaming sun that streamed in and beckoned them out.

"How 'bout breakfast?"

She hadn't expected that either. She hadn't expected to leave the hotel with his hand holding hers. She hadn't expected to stroll the boardwalk with their fingers casually entwined. To unhurriedly muse over what kind of breakfast they felt like, where they might find the best coffee. To walk into a beachside café that neither of them had ever been to before and order the Breakfast Special for Two. She hadn't expected their conversation to flow so easily without the strictures of a case. And she'd definitely forgotten Elliot's strange habit of eating food off her plate without invitation. She'd forgotten a few small things in his absence and never known a few others, not in all of their association. Like how different he looked in a Hawaiian print shirt, how relaxed, how non-cop-like. How handsome.

She'd never really pictured him in such a setting. Gazing out to sea as he lounged in his wicker chair and sipped at his coffee. Or studying stamps when they wandered through an eclectic pop-up market. Or leaning on a railing with gelato running down his fingertips as he kissed some bitter lemon from the corner of her mouth. Her partner surprised her further when that night, after another round of feverish, immersive love-making, he suggested clams and margaritas. He even promised to shout. It was at that pier-side bistro that he told her about his assignment. Not everything. Just the unclassified basics. The FBI had snapped him up immediately after his exit from the police force. He'd always maintained a good relationship with them and refused several offers of work during the period their partnership spanned. He'd told her of some, not all. Whenever Olivia asked him why he stayed with the NYPD, Elliot always gave her the same reply.

"The people," he would shrug, smiling at her across their desks or over the rim of a coffee mug or as he spun the wheel to park their sedan in front of the One-Six.

He'd never told Kathy about these job offers, partially for fear that she'd insist he take the higher paying role and partially for fear that she'd leave him on the spot if he even considered a position that would no doubt take him even further away from his family. Elliot paused, sipped his margarita and contemplated the ocean as he admitted that she re-left him shortly after he began his current assignment. The work was highly dangerous and involved long periods of undercover work in remote, overseas locations. So Kathy opted out. She took Eli to her mother's and, soon after, acquired a new job and a new man. The two of them broke the news to their adult children, sold the family house then reverted to their former divorced status. Tears threatened his eyes as he spoke of leaving his children but he nodded them away, saying his handler had been good about passing on messages and money.

"What name did they give you?" she asked, a shiver running down her spine as the wind picked up.

Elliot paused, sucking on a wedge of lemon. "I picked the name."

Her head tipped to one side. She knew she couldn't know everything but she at least wanted to know this. "What name did you choose?"

He smiled, suppressed it, then smiled again. "Graham Greene."

She snorted. She was a little drunk, and more than a little happy. Dangerously elated. A fall had to follow this short-lived tryst of theirs. She knew it, knew it would be excruciating. And didn't care. She craved every last second they had together, despite the pain that would ultimately result. Apparently, Elliot agreed with her. Because over coffee and dessert he told her of how he had managed to get that three-word message to her, of all he'd wanted those three words to convey and promise. He told her in a lowered voice tinged with salt of how, ever since, he'd been thinking of nothing but her and of everything he wanted to do to her. He told her with uncharacteristic bluntness how touching her, kissing her and feeling her envelop him surpassed his most deeply cherished fantasies.

She was wet before they finished their coffee. Her nipples throbbed with want as they paid the bill. The ocean air cooled her flushed cheeks as they strode back along the boardwalk. But the heat merely migrated downwards to where Elliot's hand rested at the base of her spine, warming her skin through her clothes. It was with a sigh of relief that they entered the Semper Fi Arms, nodding to the manager as he stood guard at the desk, a black and white documentary playing in the background of his little cubicle. They stopped on the stairs to kiss, to begin loosening clothes. His hands cupped her face while hers skated down his chest. He grabbed her wrist before her hands ventured too low and dragged her down the chintz decorated hallway. Too impatient to wait for her dig out the key to their room, Elliot soon had her up against the door, tugging at her lips with his and drawing deep moans from within her chest. He grasped her wrists, pinned them to the door and slid them up above her head. It seemed to be his favorite move. Not that he could stick with any one move for very long, as moments after immobilizing her, his hands changed course, gliding down the side of her face, her neck, over her shoulders and breasts to grip the dips of her waist. He pulled back, panting and placing his forehead against hers. When he had control over his breath and voice, he pulled back further, looking her in the eye.

"I have to be back by Oh-Seven-Hundred."

She licked her lips and swallowed. The words made her body and blood race with excitement. That still gave them over seven hours of undisturbed bliss. Her heart had a different reaction. She could already feel it cracking in two. Forbidding tears from rising, she postponed its rupture until later and instead hooked two fingers in his belt. She tugged him into her body, slid the inside of one thigh up along the outside of one of his.

"Then you better let me open the damn door, El."

-x-

He was still there when she woke. But he came out of the bathroom wearing clothes that weren't his. She didn't bother pulling the sheets up to her chest as he walked towards her and took a seat on the edge of the bed. He cupped her face, eyes roving over her before he moved in. She knew by how slowly, how carefully he sat by her and touched her, moved in and kissed her that it was for the last time. She wanted to take off those foreign clothes, draw his body back to the bed where he belonged. Over her, under her, in her. But instead, she just prepared herself. She kissed him back. Slowly. Carefully. Consciously. Memorizing every aspect of him as he memorized every aspect of her. Such details, such moments, such memories would need to last them a lifetime.

They left together, walking out of the Semper Fi Arms hand in hand. Outside, on the deserted boardwalk, their hands disconnected, they faced each other in the brightening sunlight. There was something extra when he looked at her now, when he said her name. And probably vice versa, now that they had abandoned their long-prized self-control and become the lovers they were always meant to be.

"Olivia…"

She shook her head, smiling slightly. She was determined to keep their parting light, to delay the inevitable heartbreak until the last possible moment. "Don't say it."

He frowned at her, the brand new sun making him squint. "What do you think I was going to say?"

She took in a breath, glanced out to sea then flicked her hair out of her eyes. She knew him too well and he knew it. There were only two options – something predictably stoic like his Marine motto. Or those three precious words he had whispered in her ear every time he had come inside her. Neither would do this moment justice and both would entirely break her.

"Just…take care. Out there," is what she finally settled on as a reply.

He took her hand, looked at it a moment then squeezed it tight. "You too."

She turned to leave, both wanting and not wanting to be the one to break contact. But Elliot pulled her back by her hand, sudden and resolute. Her body collided with his, his arms surrounded her and his hot, amorous breath found her ear.

"I will always love you," he muttered, choked and broken. "Never doubt it, Liv. Never forget it."

Her breath sobbed once and her hands gripped his back through his jacket. "I won't—"

Then, in an instant, he was gone. Ripped out of her arms of his own volition and striding down the boardwalk with his tote tossed over his shoulder. Olivia shoved her wind-whipped hair out of her eyes, swiped away inconvenient tears just so she could watch him walk away. Just so she could believe he was going. Gone. She needed to see it, realize it, grasp and absorb it in order to understand just how brutally her heart needed to break.

-x-

She stuffs her toes deeper into the sand and hugs her cardigan about her. She brought a bag, it sits beside her gathering sprigs of seaweed and pyramids of sand. She's not going to use it though. She's not going in. It would only emphasize his absence, her loneliness. And being here is enough – enough to enliven memories that have had to survive so many years. Her memories have faded in the past five years, slowly bled of color and detail and significance and feeling. Just like the old upholstery of the Semper Fi Arms. A whiff of sea air or rose soap or tangy margarita will always bring them back a little stronger. As does simply knowing that the Semper Fi Arms still stands, facing up to the endlessly restless sea, a ramshackle monument to their convoluted love story. So does strolling down the boardwalk with the wind at her back, urging her forward. Or sipping slowly at a bitter lemon gelato. It makes her memories feel more real and less like a dream. It helps remind her of the long departed details – of how their room smelled, how the sheets smelled, how he smelled all fresh from the shower. How it felt to sleep entwined and safe and lazy. How once he interlinked his fingers with hers as he thrust inside her and it felt like the most intimate thing she'd ever experienced in her life. How his hands fit on her hips and his hips fit between her thighs. How he groaned the first time he tasted her and sighed the last time he kissed her.

The memories are all there. Stored but faded, and a little less quick to come to mind. They'd formed them deliberately though. Used every second. Conjured up the most perfect weekend they could conceive of, knowing it would have to last them, sustain them. Possibly forever.

Olivia looks down, shocked back to the present when the cold water finally reaches her toes. The tide is coming in, the water is unforgivingly icy and the sun has all but disappeared. The elements are telling her to go. Her body feels stiff and her flesh numb as she rises and dusts the sand off her hands and clothes. She tucks two fingers into her shoes, shoulders her bag then turns her back on the ocean, heading up the beach to the boardwalk. She tells herself one more time that she's not going in. She's not going to find out if their room is free. She's not going to hand over money, take the key, climb the stairs, strip off and sleep in the bed with tears on her cheeks. Because she is not going in. She tells herself this one more time before heading for the entrance of the Semper Fi Arms.

The new carpet now looks as old as the rest of the place, which looks exactly the same as five years ago and five years before that. It smells the same too – of dusty disappointment. Her heart nevertheless skips, associating the smell with a particular brand of bliss. Her heart sinks again when the manager, the old Marine with one arm, tells her that their room, Room 16, is currently occupied. Her disappointment is so acute that her bag drops at her side and she feels her face pale. She considers leaving, is just about to – it wouldn't be the same, not if it wasn't their room. But the manager is scouring his rather scant reservations, searching for a free room and muttering under his breath. He notes that the occupant of Room 16 was expecting somebody but by the name of Greene, not Benson.

Her eyes drop to an envelope on the counter and her lips part as she recognizes the familiar scrawl. "That's me," she croaks, nodding at the envelope.

The old man lifts it, squints at the hand then at her.

"Benson is my maiden name," she adds haltingly. "Greene…Greene is my…married name."

The manager barely hesitates. As a manager of a cheap hotel on Brighton Beach, he's probably used to such transparent shenanigans. As soon as the envelope is in her hand, she is ripping it open, palming the key inside and heading up the stairs. Her lungs and thighs protest her swift ascent but all of her breathes an immense sigh of relief as her key slides into the worn lock. It's been five goddamn years. Five years to the day since she last set eyes on him. She expects him to look different – and this time he does. Bigger, hairier, greyer, wilder. But the light in those blue eyes when she emerges from the shadows of the little corridor is exactly how she remembered, exactly how she hoped.

Elliot turns away from the window, a glass in his hand and a bandage around his wrist. He watches her drop her bag to the floor, scattering sand all over the carpet. Then he lifts his eyes to her face.

"Staying awhile?" he asks, a slight rasp in his voice.

She smiles at him, tears in her eyes. "God, I hate this place."

He returns her smile and takes one step forward, knowing that by hate she really means love. She moves towards him, walks right into his ready embrace. The breath expels from her body and from his and new air finally enters their lungs. They can now begin creating fresh memories for however long they will this time need them to last. She lifts her hands to his face, takes in all the precious old familiarities and all the mysterious new nuances. Then, heart in her throat, she kisses him. Elliot kisses her with the same ferocity, touches her with the same hunger as before. He feels, tastes, smells just as she remembered.

Just as she remembered. Only better.

 _END._


End file.
